Joseph Sabino Mistick: A lesson on power from the smiling pope

The old silver coin that was cast to commemorate the election of Pope John Paul I is well tarnished now and still in the frame it was placed in nearly 40 years ago. Quickly dubbed “The Smiling Pope,” Albino Luciani died suddenly in 1978 after 33 days as pope.

But that coin continues to remind us of two important lessons regarding the nature of power that apply to American politics today.

The first lesson is that if you are not at least a little bit afraid of power, you probably should never have power. Albino, a simple man from a small Italian village, initially threatened to resign if elected pope, not sure that he was worthy. And that attitude — his hesitancy to embrace that power — is exactly what made him worthy.

The second lesson is that nobody owns power or has a right to wield it forever. Some leaders have a long run with power, but it can end in a flash, too. Poor Albino had no choice, but others are intoxicated with power and they will do anything to keep it.

We are seeing that now in Georgia, where the old Republican political establishment has watched its power fray. Democrat Joe Biden beat Republican Donald Trump in Georgia in 2020, and Georgia voters also elected two Democratic U.S. senators.

And when Brad Raffensberger, an old-school Republican secretary of state, certified Biden’s victory, he became a pariah to many in his own party. For telling the truth about an honest election, Raffensberger was bashed and ridiculed by Trump and others.

And to finish “killing the messenger,” the Republican-controlled state Legislature changed the law and can now replace the secretary of state with a panel composed of its own partisan appointees. That panel would have the power to replace local election officials and take over local election boards and county election offices — a recipe for stealing elections.

Georgia is not alone. Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice, recently posted an article on the center’s site about “The Growing Election Sabotage Movement.”

“Two state legislatures have bestowed upon themselves the power to remove and replace local election officials with partisan operatives. Six states have passed laws threatening election officials with new or heightened criminal penalties. Three states have robbed election officials of the power to properly regulate partisan poll monitors in the polling place,” he wrote.

“In 2021, lawmakers in seven states — Arizona, Nevada, Missouri, Michigan, Texas, Idaho and Oklahoma — introduced bills to give elected officials the power to overturn an election,” he added. Luckily, none of those have passed so far.

Barton Gellman recently wrote in The Atlantic that if the next plot to overthrow a national election succeeds, “the ballots cast by American voters will not decide the presidency in 2024. Thousands of votes will be thrown away, or millions, to produce the required effect. The winner will be declared the loser. The loser will be certified president-elect.”

Soviet leader Josef Stalin, America’s most powerful enemy in the Cold War, expressed his contempt for democracy, saying, “Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything.” We believe in the peaceful transfer of power, not the murder of democracy.